EP#19 Mikhil Innani – Making a career in startups, leading and measuring growth at scale ups & building the AWS of lending

The VCpreneur: Startups | Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Fundraising

In this episode, Mikhil Innani, Managing Director & CEO @Apollo Finvest, joins our host Digjay, to talk about his varied experiences of scaling products across multiple startups (Pharmeasy, CouponDunia, Hotstar), cultivating a strong team culture at early stages of a startup, defining and measuring growth when scaling up & how he is building the AWS of lending at his latest venture – Apollo Finvest.

Apollo Finvest is a public listed NBFC which is currently building the "AWS for Lending" platform enabling fintechs to offering digital loans in <48 hours.

Mikhil has 8+ years experience of building products from scratch to scale across different sectors. Prior to Apollo Finvest, he co-founded PharmEasy (Series C funded, online medicine delivery startup) and headed consumer products and growth at Hotstar (India’s largest OTT platform) and CouponDunia (Acquired by Times Internet). Mikhil holds a Master's degree in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor's degree from Mumbai University. You can connect with him here on Linkedin / Twitter

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Show notes –

1. (01:35) How Mikhil started his entrepreneurship journey with CouponDunia, followed by PharmEasy & Hotstar?

2. (09:20) How being an entrepreneur over the years has impacted Mikhil’s personality today?

3. (10:34) How one can accelerate their career growth while working at a startup?

4. (11:02) Creating an environment that enables founders to build a great culture at early stages of a startup

5. (14:55) What to look for in the first 10 hires of your startup?

6. (18:13) The framework for measuring & achieving ‘growth’; Importance of defining the north star metric

7. (24:30) Mikhil’s switch from Hotstar; The inspiration behind founding Apollo Finvest

8. (29:50) How Apollo Finvest is building the AWS of lending? Vision for Apollo Finvest in next 5 years

9. (34:35) Rapid fire and closing remarks